iPage E-Commerce Tools

iPage E-Commerce Tools

Engaging in a buy and sell transaction over the internet qualifies as e-commerce. There is no limit to what you can sell, whether it’s a product, a service or the website itself. But to engage in e-commerce, the first thing you will need is a website where you can start your business. For a shopping site you will need functions that allow customers to browse through your wares and shop for products. For others, you will need marketing tools and avail of certain services like advertisingfrom other known sites or using search engine optimization services. All these are considered e-commerce tools, and they are the ones you should look for when signing up with a web hosting provider.

iPage E-commerce

iPage is a trusted name when you talk about affordable yet exceptional web hosting service. It’s been around since 1998 and is responsible for millions of websites in existence today. It offers one of the cheapest hosting prices today and is ideal for those who wish to start an online business. For as low as $1.99 per month you can get unlimited bandwidth and storage space, one year free domain, unlimited POP/email accounts and MySQL databases, a free site builder, vDeck control panel, and a number of add-ons you can choose to include in your hosting package. iPage also offers e-commerce tools which will make a fine addition to your marketing arsenal. These tools include: shopping cart applications, credit card processors and SSL certificates.

Shopping Carts – these refer to applications which can be installed on your iPage-hosted website to add new shopping functionalities, the most common of them – an “add to cart” button. With shopping carts, customers can browse through your products neatly arranged in your site’s catalog and when they spot a product they want to buy, all they have to do is click the “add to cart” button. If they wish to replace or remove a product, they can do so in one click. Once the customer is done shopping for products, all he needs to do is click the “check-out” button and he will be directed to a page where he can pay the aggregate price of all the products he added in the cart – the exact same way when you shop in a grocery store. This makes online shopping fun and easy. However, to process online payments, a site needs credit card processing capabilities.

Credit Card Processing Applications – Paying with paper bills is apparently not an acceptable mode of payment online, unless only the shopping part is done online. In real e-commerce, the entire transaction – from choosing products and paying their prices, should be done online. And the acceptable mode of payment is through credit cards. When you sign up with a web host and publish your website, you will not automatically get credit card support. You need to purchase them from merchant solution providers like PayPal or AcceptSafe. Fortunately, iPage lets you do so without much hassle. With just one click, you can already get your own credit card processing application on your website.

SSL Certificates – Try checking your Facebook login page and you will see the green padlock on your browsers web address. Also, facebook’s domain name starts with an “https://”. These are the signs which tell users that the page they are on is SSL-protected. SSL is the acronym for Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol that keeps a webpage and its contents secured by using encryption. This way, hackers will not be able to access any information on the page through IP spoofing or by using malwares and other tools. SSL is a must-have for websites that accept sensitive information from their customers such as credit card information. You know how dangerous it is to have your credit card details stolen by a hacker who can easily get a shopping spree using it. Because of this, iPage lets you purchase premium SSL certificates for your website. Aside from this, iPage provides all its users with free shared SSL certificate.